Upfront with Dale Dudley: Getting Thinner

After years of struggling, the scale is
finally heading in the right direction

By Dale Dudley

Published: April 1, 2014

Illustration by Bendik Kaltenborn

My first column for Austin Monthly in January 2005 was titled “My Year in the Gym.” It was a poke at my lifelong resistance to exercise at the expense of gym rats. In it, I mourned my weight increase from 150 pounds in high school to 220 as an adult. In 2008, I followed it up with a column called “Piling on the Pounds,” where I mused in bewilderment that I had added 100 pounds to the skinniest kid to ever walk the halls of Robert E. Lee High in Tyler, Texas. Anyone see where this is headed?

Last summer, I literally washed up on the beach. My wife took a night photo of me near the ocean in Kauai, Hawaii, and the ball of my chin was sticking out of some fat guy’s face. The next day, we decided to take a tour of the island in a plane. Having some flight school under my belt, I asked to sit up front. We weighed in, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I was not over their poundage limit. We were somewhere over Waimea Canyon when I spotted a yellow note the pilot had stuck to the control panel. I saw my wife’s name: “Amanda: 120,” and then my eyes landed on “Dale: 272.”

I don’t get motion sickness, but for the rest of that flight I wanted to throw up all of the nachos I had ever consumed. I couldn’t believe it. The number kept running over and over in my head: TWO SEVENTY-TWO. My inner voice tried its best to soothe my shamed inner child: “Hey, that’s with clothes on!” and “Remember, you’re 6-foot-4!” I made yet another vow that I was going to work out and diet when I returned home.

When we got back to Austin, I watched a documentary about early man and his natural diet. After that, I decided to stick to meat, vegetables and nuts. This was a good excuse for me to stand in front of the fridge and eat as much pepperoni or lunch meat as I wanted—right out of the package. And a “handful” of almonds in the afternoon would be enough to fill all the hands of every man, woman and child who lived in my cave. Plus, exercise made me hungrier. Within a few weeks, I was a big, greasy mess.

My wife and I still made excuses to eat out at restaurants for lunches and dinners on the weekend. I told her that oftentimes I felt like I was having a panic attack after the meal. It was the same feeling I got one afternoon when I lay down with my 2-year-old daughter in an attempt to get her to take a nap. I got an odd sensation in my chest, like I was missing heartbeats—it’s probably because I was actually missing heartbeats. Using a portable blood pressure cuff, I learned that my heart rate was measuring a disco-fast rhythm of 188 beats per minute. I was 272 pounds and 188 bpm! After that, I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, A-fib for short. My heart was backfiring and beating faster just to power my fat ass. Further tests revealed a thickening of the artery walls and, of course, high blood pressure. Blood tests introduced the ominous word “pre-diabetes.”

Starting with Dr. McDougall’s cup-of-soup diet in 2001, I had tried at least 10 or more diets. I had burned through three gym memberships and just as many personal trainers. At the most, I would lose 10 or 15 pounds, only to put on more after I quit. I was depressed and disgusted with myself. I went to the Web and started seriously investigating bariatric surgery. I casually mentioned this on the air only to hear from a listener who wrote to tell me he had the surgery and even then gained the weight back. He recommended I research a diet that involved protein supplement meals that was working for him. I did, and with much skepticism headed to the Lewis Family Clinic in Dripping Springs, where he said he went.

That was almost five months ago, and as of this writing I weigh 231 pounds—and I haven’t exercised once. I will soon, but that’s when I hit my ideal weight of 214. I waited until I had lost at least 40 pounds before I dared write about it. A few weeks ago, for the first time in my life, I went into a store to buy a smaller pair of jeans and a belt that would fit. When friends comment on the loss, it’s like dreams I used to have where I was thin again.

The blood pressure medicine is gone, and my cholesterol scores recently were better than my much-younger wife. But the best thing that has happened for me is the knowledge of why I got fat, and what I can do about it. There is more and more data coming out that many of the things we have been sold about fat, bread, pasta, good foods and bad foods is more than likely just bad science that went “viral” decades ago.

The food pyramid should go the way of the ones in Egypt­—as a relic. I’m still eating carbs, just the ones that don’t come in a bag or a box. I still eat meat and other lean proteins. I’ve cut my sugar consumption by 99 percent. That 1 percent is when I cheat. But, hey, I’m only human. I’m not counting calories or taking a pill. I’m rarely hungry because I’m not eating the foods that make me hungry and keep all of us in that vicious cycle of overeating.

I don’t have all the answers, but neither do the trainers, doctors or hucksters on TV. I’m not here to sell you anything other than encouragement—I’m just here bidding a fond farewell to my belly. Oh, and I’m also here to force the art department of Austin Monthly to draw me much thinner than they have in the past.